An element management system server (an EMS server) is a server that is responsible for administering one or more services on one or more network elements. Each network element (NE) administered by an EMS server is typically the same type of NE, such as a router or switch in a packet-switched network. Some EMS servers have the capability of managing multiple types of NEs from a single vendor or manufacturer. An administrator may use an element management system client (an EMS client) to communicate with the EMS server. The EMS client provides an interface that allows an administrator to manage and configure the services being provisioned by the EMS server on a particular NE.
A service being administered by an EMS server is typically provided by a service application. An EMS server typically provisions multiple services on any given NE being administered by the EMS server. As a result, most NEs execute multiple service support applications.
For each service application that the software being executed by an EMS server (the EMS server software) supports, the EMS server software supports a particular set of versions of the service application. For example, an illustrative EMS server may execute EMS server software that supports version 1.0 of service application A, version 2.0 of service application B, and versions 1.0, 2.0, and 2.2 of service application C.
To illustrate, assume that an administrator wishes to configure how a particular service, such as Voice Over IP (VoIP), is being provisioned on router XYZ. The EMS server software supports version 2.0 of the service application providing the VoIP service (“the VoIP service application”), and router XYZ also executes version 2.0 of the VoIP service application. The administrator may use an EMS client, hosted on the administrator's workstation, to communicate with the EMS server. After configuring how the EMS server provisions the VoIP service, the administrator may deploy the VoIP service, as configured, on router XYZ by sending instructions from the EMS client to the EMS server to cause the EMS server to provision the VoIP service, as configured, on router XYZ.
From time to time, new versions of a service application may become available. When a new version of a service application becomes available, to enable the EMS server to provision a service using the new version of the service application, a new version of the EMS server software that supports the new version of the service application must be installed on the EMS server. This is so because an EMS server may not provision a service on a particular NE that is executing a version of a service application that the EMS server does not support.
However, upgrading the EMS server software requires a certain amount of time, money, and resources. For example, before installing a new version of the EMS server software, the existing version of the EMS server software may need to be uninstalled. Also, the EMS server may need to be taken offline, and therefore be unavailable, when the EMS server software is being upgraded. As a result, all the services being provisioned by the EMS server may be unavailable during the time the EMS server software is being upgraded. Thus, the fundamental problem is how to enable a management system to manage NE's when services on the NE's change over time, without reinstalling the management system.
To minimize both the amount of time that an EMS server is unavailable and the inconvenience to the operator of the EMS server, it is typical to wait a length of time before upgrading the EMS server software so that new versions of multiple service applications may be reflected in the newly installed EMS server software. For example, every six months, the manufacturer of the EMS server may make available a new version of the EMS server software that reflects any new version of service applications that became available since the last available release of the EMS server software. Unfortunately, this approach naturally delays the amount of time before which the EMS server may provision services using a newly available version of a service applications.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to allow an EMS server to support new versions of service applications without performing a full upgrade of the EMS server software.
The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.